A cooling water system is used in industrial processes to cool down hot process streams from their supply conditions to target temperatures. A cooling water system is comprised of three major components, namely a cooling tower, a heat exchanger network (HEN), and a pumping system; these elements have strong interactions with each other and therefore must be optimized simultaneously to yield an ...

We develop and estimate a model of supply response when transactions costs create a situation where some producers buy, others sell, and others do not participate in markets. We present two rationales for why producing households may have different relationships to the market: proportional and fixed transactions costs. Using data on Mexican corn producers, we estimate an empirical model that al...

Health effects associated with electricity production, especially air pollution from fossil fuel combustion, have received much attention in the past 30 years. Virtually no attention has been paid to the health costs of a reduced or overpriced energy supply although these are real and formidable. Stringent regulations mandating control technology on stack emissions and/or burning of low sulfur ...

The bullwhip effect (amplification of order variance from a downstream stage in a supply chain to an upstream stage) is widely observed in practice, and is generally considered a major cause of supply chain inefficiencies. But are supply chains always better off with strategies that are designed to dampen the bullwhip effect? This paper considers a model where a single product is sold through m...

Assessing water sources for drinking and irrigation along with community vulnerability, especially in developing and rural regions, is important for reducing risk posed by poor water quality and limited water availability and accessibility. We present a case study of rural mining-agricultural communities in the Lake Poopó Basin, one of the poorest regions on the Bolivian Altiplano. Here, relati...

introduction agricultural research is important and one of the determinant factors of development of technologies in agricultural sector. among agricultural research disciplines, breeding programs, especially, wheat breeding programs are one of the applied approaches in improving of production and food security. based on a study by byerlee & traxler (1995), economic benefits and internal rate o...

The role of water pricing for managing water resources is widely recognized in many areas of the world because of the increasing scarcity of water resources, a high competition between water uses and environmental degradation. Based on the analysis of cost of water, this paper explores which types of cost should be reflected in the water pricing enhancing the sustainability of water resources. ...